The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

gave a welcoming whinny. Bess and Victoria, Pamela’s two mares, gazed at him incuriously and then went back to staring at the wooden planks of their stalls. He changed into his riding clothes, despite Balzac’s best attentions, gave Hector his customary apple and saddled all the horses. He hadn’t seen Fabiola’s car but he assumed she’d join them. She knew it was his turn to cook this evening.
    ‘It’s safe to come out now,’ said Pamela, dressed for riding and her still-damp hair pinned back. She could change faster than any woman he’d ever known. She reached for her riding hat and kissed him. ‘We had a plumbing disaster this afternoon, but Antonio fixed the blocked loo and persuaded Marcel to come and pump everything out.’
    ‘And somebody was just enthusing to me about the delights of life in the country. You’ll meet him at dinner, that drama festival guy I was telling you about last night.’
    ‘It’s alright for him to wax lyrical. He lives in Paris where they have sewers, and on days like this I wish I did too. Fabiola rang to say she’s on her way. She was held up by a broken bone she had to set at one of the camp grounds. We spent half the morning moving her stuff across.’
    ‘Across to where?’
    ‘Didn’t I tell you? She’s moving into the spare room in my house for the summer so I can rent out her
gîte
. Lucky you, you’ll be sharing the bathroom with two women. With the rental I’ll be able to install a second bathroom upstairs, at the end of the landing.’
    ‘Do I get to scrub Fabiola’s back, too?’ he grinned and hugged her from behind.
    ‘Absolutely not. Don’t even think about it.’

10
    Bruno returned home to find that Valentoux had explored his way around the kitchen and dining room. He had set the table and gathered wild flowers from the field behind the blackcurrant bushes. They filled the vase he had placed on the outdoor table, where Bruno’s champagne flutes had been polished and made ready. Balzac had raced ahead and was already making friends with their guest. A few moments later he spotted Pamela and Fabiola coming up the drive bearing bottles of wine. Balzac tore himself from Valentoux to greet them and then darted back to Valentoux again.
    ‘You look a lot better than you did yesterday,’ Fabiola told Valentoux. ‘At one point I thought of declaring you in shock, but you seemed to be pretty lucid in answering Bruno’s questions. My sympathies on the loss of your friend.’
    ‘I want to hear what you have planned for the theatre festival,’ said Pamela. ‘But maybe we’d better wait until Annette joins us.’
    Bruno was pouring the champagne when Annette arrived in her small blue Peugeot with the wide tyres for rally-driving, sending Balzac into another frenzy of welcome.
    Bruno excused himself to visit the kitchen to heat a pan of sunflower oil for beignets. Readying one bowl of spicy salsa,he took from the fridge a pot of Stéphane’s
aillou
, fresh cheese flavoured with herbs and garlic, spooned it into a bowl and took both bowls out to the garden with some small plates and a pile of paper napkins. Back inside, he dipped the sliced courgettes into a light batter he made out of flour and water and then eased them into the hot fat. Once they were brown and crisp, he took the beignets out with a slotted spoon, sprinkled salt onto them, and slipped in a fresh batch to fry. He took the first plateful out to his guests and left Pamela to show Valentoux how to hold the hot beignet in a paper napkin and then decide whether to smear it with salsa or
aillou
.
    The sound of laughter greeted him as he emerged with the second batch, Valentoux deploying a range of voices to play various roles in the story he was telling. He broke off to applaud Bruno’s return.
    ‘I never had courgettes like this, and adding this
aillou
makes a perfect couple,’ he declared. ‘It’s like oysters and champagne or caviar and vodka; heavenly twins.’
    ‘Wait till Bruno introduces you to his foie gras and Monbazillac,’ said Pamela.
    Nothing like food to get a conversation going, thought Bruno, smiling as he went for the final batch of beignets. But he wondered at Yves’s surprisingly cheerful mood so soon after his lover’s murder. Was it the thespian style, Bruno wondered, the tradition that the show must go on? He’d never come across someone quite like Valentoux before, a man quite so deliberately theatrical that Bruno suspected he’d never be able to tell